How could I have left out the important part of Rhinebeck – the purchases? Right you all were to harass me. Well, let me tells ya – after this weekend it’s going to have to be lean times around here at Knitting to Stay Sane, but I have no regrets on my purchases and I can’t wait to start using them.

[Warning! Lots of pictures in this post once again.]

First, the Socks That Rock. I didn’t expect to buy this. In fact, this was the only unexpected purchase of the day. We arrived at around 10:30am, and since the grounds had been open since 9am and I’d heard all these horror stories about the huge lineups for STR and “get there at dawn or you’ll be sorry!”, I fully expected there to be nothing left. But there we were at 10:30am in Building A, and I decided to check it out, and lo and behold there were still plenty of skeins left. I became powerless.

At first I picked up 4 different single skeins, then went and stood in line. But as I stood there I reasoned with myself that I had plenty of sock yarn at home in regular-sock amounts, although what I didn’t have was sock yarn in knee-sock amounts. So I did some re-thinking, left the line (but the ladies let me come back, I even asked their permission, good Canadian that I am) and started putting a couple of skeins back. What I came back with was 2 skeins each of Jasper and Garnet Dreams, and one of Peacock – possibly the last skein there was. I was pleased to note at 4pm that, while there remained yet a few more skeins of STR on the hooks, none of the remaining colours were ones that I had purchased – but the ones I had put back were indeed still there! I lucked out.

My ‘to buy’ list included a sweater’s worth of something worsted, a drop spindle, and some roving for me to keep practicing with. I found the sweater’s worth of something from Wild Apple Farms, in this cranberry-heather sort of shade:

It was a freakin’ bargoon, my peeps. $33 for 7 skeins. I hope that I will not regret passing on the 8th skein, but as it is this should be enough for a new Twist cardigan, to replace the dearly departed one of a few posts ago.

Ta ra, ta ra, an Ashford drop spindle all for meeeeee. Rebecca helped me pick one that wasn’t too heavy, and I look forward to using it. It’s sitting there against a bag of dyed wool (not sure what kind) roving from A Touch of Twist that was too pretty not to buy. And then there was more in the roving area…

Here we see half a pound of merino/silk dyed roving from Cloverleaf Farms. It was once again, too pretty to pass up. Except then, after I bought it, R had to listen to me whimper things like, “But wait, isn’t merino supposed to be hard? What if should have bought something else? Shouldn’t I be spinning with crud first and then working up to the hard stuff?” So then I ended up with this:

It is entirely possible that I swung too far in the other direction, but all I know is that it was a half a pound of something woolen for six bucks. It is also entirely possible that this is simply glorified dryer lint (I am not really sure if this drafts or even has a staple length), but hey. At least it’s something that I won’t care deeply enough about if I screw it up, and I can work on it first and practice my technique. And if I have to throw it out the window and disavow all knowledge of it, that wouldn’t be the biggest loss ever. And at least it’s green! Pretty, pretty green!

So all in all a great weekend. The icing on the cake was getting a day and a half tacked on to see a bit of New York City. And a fine, fine city it is.

you are very talented, very cute and i love your taste in yarn. i hope go to rhinebeck one day and learn to spin. thanks for all of the inspiration. bty – my blog is not what i want it to be, however, i just had back surgeryon tuesday and will be out of work for at least the next 2 months. i am hoping to work on my blog and make my time off both healing and productive. thanks for the smiles.

That purple is wicked awesome! (I wouldn’t worry too much about merino – the first spinning I did was on 100% merino – because it was there and cheap and I knew what it was and didn’t know it was supposed to be too hard for me… you’ll be fine.)

Oh MY…. what a wonderful post. Your haul, a fine and delightful one if ever there was! Love the yarn for your sweater and holy moly, what a deal!
My jaw dropped at the sight of all that STR in one photo, my handy dandy towel was necessary for mopping up all the drool. and all the roving! and the spindle!
Loved all the photos of places, a story in of itself and actually, so very touching.
Thank you Glenna!

Seems like you had a really nice trip.. I’m glad! :) I’ll drag the boy to Rhinebeck one day. I’m trying to persuade him to knit just a couple of stitches, but he keeps saying that “real men don’t knit”. Secretly, though, I think he’s just scared he might actually like it and that I’ll tell everyone if he does. >:D
He helped me frog my Tangled Yoke cardi today – I can see him helping me carry yarn all over New York. *_* Oh, the day…!